I have to agree with @Craig , @Mudlark and others when they suggest this is an improvement on Series 11. To be upfront I didn’t get much from the last series and special at all, and I may write a blog about it sometime rather than going episode by episode.

This had pace (almost frenetic compared to series 11) and I thought the direction and…[Read more]

@juniperfish Well, trust no one — the Master could well be lying about all this Big Lie stuff.  Besides, Thirteen didn’t take a look around.  Could be some Drylanders about, making do.  Or this will prove rewritable like in “Day of the Doctor”.  Thirteen didn’t get to save Gallifrey then, but in this year’s finale, she does!

On the other han…[Read more]

@juniperfish I felt as though the 7% not human DNA was a big part of Barton’s coldness here.

And I think the Master played the Nazi thing a bit camp mostly because he’d find the concept of human racism ridiculous – not because of anything fine in his character, but because he holds the whole species in such contempt. Pot calling the kettle a…[Read more]

@juniperfish has expressed beautifully almost everything I could wish to say about Dracula.  Gatiss and Moffat have done a brilliant job of adapting and expanding on the story and themes in the original book, even better than their take on Sherlock in the first series in my opinion; the transition at the end of the second episode from the late…[Read more]

@pedant yup, and often when they’re not metaphors for male sexual violence, they’re warnings against predatory lesbians..

@juniperfish I don’t know – she was in hospital dying, so they would probably have run tests on her – she was asymptomatic when she drank the blood. It’s possible that the pain was the process of regeneration rather than the…[Read more]

@juniperfish

I’m inclined to agree about Mina, although I think you’re right that it was more to do with simplifying the structure of a story which – in true style of its era – was a tad prone to wandering about the houses.

But I think Lucy was more of a metaphor for internet attention seekers – with their coterie of admirers (per @miapatrick…[Read more]

@Thane16 – Happy to offer any cooking tips I can, Puro and Thane, tho it may not go further than – make sure you take the giblets out! As @idiotsavon (hi back) says – melted plastic is not a recommended seasoning! (Been there, done that too, I try to stick to garlic now 😉 )

@JanetteB Sorry about the cinema disaster, but sounds like you made the…[Read more]

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@JimTheFish

this incarnation seems to be in no way affected by her previous experiences prior to this story

Quite. Which is, in itself, a stonking great clue – because the delivery package itself refers to her previous incarnations and she mentions another event later.

And yet, her reaction to the Kerblam man is ‘Yippee, this is a package and…[Read more]

Rewatch

Per @juniperfish, Charlie was never presented as a ‘union’ man – he lied to get the job and referred only to ‘The Cause’ – and was closer to a Luddite (aside: although they could easily be interpreted as proto-middle classes trying to protect their privilege). He had murdered and was planning mass-murder.  He was no Tolpuddle Martyr, but…[Read more]

I think it fairly indicative that I have started reading the blogs on “the other place” and comments here before watching the episode again. Something I stopped doing during Capdoc years. Now I am even commenting before watching the episode. I was really looking forward to this episode too after see the teaser. Think I have going to have some…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

The economic history of the Industrial Revolution isn’t my specialist period, but I will say one thing. Agriculture is, generally, over-romanticised. My great-grandfather had a smallholding in the hills; it’s not something I’d ever want to do.

The most recent industrial revolution is in China; it’s noticeable how many agricultural…[Read more]

@Juniperfish and @JimTheFish

Politically, for me, this one pulled its punches in a way Rosa and Demons in the Punjab did not.

I actually think it did something very daring: it chose not to make the obvious critique. Writers and artists, at the moment, tend to be left of centre – as you say, this particular episode looks conservative compared to…[Read more]

@juniperfish

Nice-ish middle-management, historically, are not the engine of betterment.

But a large and stable middle class is a sign of it. Entire empires, from China to Rome, and even Britain have fallen because of the lack of a stable middle class and, instead, reliance on various from of indenture (from outright chattel slavery to…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

Charlie’s another fanatic. We’re racking up quite a lot of fanatics so far, with often very different beliefs – some of them reasonable, some not.

But the point I picked up was that Charlie wasn’t a Luddite as such, because he wasn’t really one of the warehouse workers who were doing jobs that could have been perfectly well done by…[Read more]

More and more I’m shouting “THIS IS THE SERIES I WANTED WHEN I WAS TWELVE!!!”

Meaning, Hero Girls, adventure, heroes who aren’t warriors but save the day, humor, exotic locales (including Sheffield), a quirky spacetimeship, random forays into living history (which I grew up to do a lot of), space the final frontier, aliens…

@drben I agree,…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip @juniperfish Just to be clear: Even though it’s natural for us to want the Doctor and/or Yaz to rush back to save Prem, I knew it wasn’t possible, and so I didn’t really yearn for it. The Doctor established that changing this outcome might very well erase Yaz’s existence, and of course I don’t want that. But I thought, despite her…[Read more]

@Juniperfish

it’s creating a negative space in the narrative arc screaming, “We MUST DO something to stand up to bigotry!!!” which, as I’ve said upstream, Chibnall and team are thereby inviting us to apply in our own time.

That thread and the continuing moral imperative is, above all, what is keeping me engaged with S11, because there is a small p…[Read more]

I continue to be conflicted. Clive James once had a line that went something like whenever he found that he shared an opinion with Jane Fonda he immediately had to examine it to figure out what was wrong with it. Similarly, it’s frustrating me that while I have absolutely no truck with the #notmydoctor #whotoopc moron brigade, I find that I’m…[Read more]

Partition was such a difficult subject for a show such as Doctor Who to address, in view of the millions who died in the needless and senseless bloodletting, that I was reluctant even to watch this episode for fear that it would be mishandled, and the title, suggesting the introduction of alien antagonists, was not reassuring. My fears were…[Read more]